Considering we are part of a bicycle racing team it is
stunning how many of my teammates hadn’t spent much, or any, time on mountain
bikes. A friend invited a few of us to
the mountains later this month and in preparation for that adventure we had a
few teammates out to the valley for some mountain bike skills practice.
You don’t need a lot of practice to ride uphill when
you’ve been doing it on road and gravel bikes.
With a truck to shuttle, and enough riders so that we didn’t mind when
it was our turn, we got in a week’s worth of riding in a very full
weekend.
Jan Heine's preferred drivetrain.....
Modern mountain bikes with full suspension, hydraulic
disc brakes and dropper posts are a miracle.
It doesn’t matter if you have never been on a mountain bike, or if you
suffered with 26” tires at 50 psi, canti brakes, crappy shifting and hard tail
aluminum frames; what the bikes can do now is amazing regardless.
Tom remarked, “This is so fun; why haven’t we done this
before?”
El Chefe’ and I offered all the tips and tricks we had
and our brothers took them to heart. It
was impressive to see a bunch of fifty-something men go so far out of their
comfort zone. Their bravery was rewarded
with good times and competent bike-handling skills.
As we get older one of our coping skills is to shrink our
worlds and only do what we are comfortable doing. While our group outwardly looked like a
Flowmax commercial, we were in fact keeping ourselves young by doing new
things.
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